Once upon a time I was a green party environmentalist anti-war nut-job. I'm still most of those things but I learned some economics along the way, so Green Party is out. Suffice it to say that I run into some friction when suggesting that we should all get rid of our lawns. My free market apologist friends bristle at the notion. They inevitably respond with some retort citing the division of labor. I'm a big fan of the division of labor, but I question what it has to do with the point at hand. It could, but it doesn't have to. We'll address that a little later, though. For now, it kills me that capitalists have internalized erroneous narratives.
Yards started as a way for princes to boast their wealth. They had resources so vast they could leave large portions of property unproductive. Today, the same action functions as a shackle to a centralized system. A system that fails us at every step. Modern mass-farming practices are a theft of the value of the land. The chemicals poison the land at best. At worst irrigation flushes the soil microbiome into waterways and the ocean. It's a problem for that ecosystem as well, but I'm not here to rail against factory farms. I'm here to tell you why you shouldn't leave your resources unengaged.
Food Production Takes Too Much Time
The biggest rebuttal I always hear is that people don't have the time to take care of gardens. Which flaunts their own ignorant presuppositions. First, when did I say anything about gardens? Gardens are great. We'd have a greater respect for life if we spent more time working the land but there are more options than gardens.
If I'm a truly lazy individual, I could plant some fruit trees. Beyond some initial setup these don't require a ton of maintenance. My grandmother had an enormous apple tree behind her house. She did nothing to the tree and each fall we had more fruit than we knew how to utilize. If you choose your varieties right It's virtually set and forget. But this is assumes doing any work. I could hire someone to do my own food production for a cut of the produce or as a paid employee. Depending on the amount of space I have I could even turn the space into a revenue generator and sell surplus. What self proclaimed capitalist is leaving easy money on the table? Why would you knowingly waste a productive resource? This isn't the time to stroke your own ego like those princes of yore?
Congratulations On Such A Fashionable Yoke
So I've addressed how presuppositions about using land for agricultural purposes are unfounded. Mere excuses to leave money on the table. What a terrible leftist I must be with all this talk about money and profit.
The real reasons to put your land to use are that those technocratic lunatics that have plans for your life. These same lunatics ignored economic law for the past two years and delivered us into a global recession. A recession many are hardly able to conceive the gravity of yet. I'm not sure if you've been ignoring their pronouncements in global papers. Pronouncements on how we need to stop eating meat and move to inferior protein sources. I've even seen some academics declare dead people could be a source of protein. I'd rather eat the bugs myself. Dry roasted crickets are pretty tasty, but not instead of steak. Why would I not already be divesting myself from this system?
So they're already telling you they want to take your meat but what about the veggies? Every year they require more fertilizer to grow enough to feed humanity. This says nothing of the nutrition that is no longer in the soil to be used by plants. Much of it drained in previous plantings or run off through irrigation into the ocean. The end result is something that looks a bit like food without the micronutrition. Nutrition easily found in regeneratively raised counterparts. Technocratic genius's have again managed to think themselves into a hell of their own device. Plants are fertilized by soil which are built on the organic waste of animals. I imagine this being a problem for growing. Eventually this will destroy the ability of the current farm land to grow food. If it's not already dead.
The Long & Short
They're destroying our crop land while telling you meat is off the table. I'm not sure what the expect us to eat at that point. Maybe, that is the point. I hope they're just idiots and not evil. However, if I were you I'd be doing whatever I could to increase my own economic output. Whatever I could to make myself more resilient to evil or stupidity.
If you've read this far here's your cliff notes:
Utilizing land for agriculture can make you money and doesn't require you lift a finger.
Trusting anyone actively collapsing the global economy about food is tantamount to suicide.